Black Dawn

under a drain spout, which I missed until the liquid gushed out and landed on me with a wet slap.

The draug formed out of it, clinging to my back, clawing at me. They weren’t strong, but everywhere they touched skin it felt like acid burning off layers. The clothes stopped it for only a few seconds. If the draug couldn’t soak through it, they flowed around and under, seeking prey.

Junkies seeking their particular brand of crack.

I had a shotgun loaded with silver, but there was no way to get it into position to hurt the one on my back without doing damage to myself. My strength didn’t work well against the draug, because they were mush in this form, and when something has a blob of a body, it’s difficult to get anything like a real grip.

I scraped it off against the rough brick side of the building, and my shirt got torn in the process. The skin beneath felt burned and raw, and already I seemed noticeably weaker.

Worse: the noise cancellation device that I’d been wearing clipped to my belt was shattered. I held my breath and tried not to listen … and then realized that I didn’t need to worry. The draug weren’t singing here. Not at all. Not even a hum. If they’d been able to make that sound, I’d have lost my focus, gotten confused, been overtaken … but something had happened to them, something to impair their ability to generate that call. When they’d first arrived in Morganville, they hadn’t been able to sing, either. Magnus had gone after vampires one by one, and only when he had a certain number of draug under his command could he start that eerie, beautiful call that drew us in against our will.

We must have killed enough, at least for now, to rob him of that power. Eve would have, at this point, said, “Go us!” but I wasn’t feeling especially victorious. I was feeling weak. Got to keep moving. The whole point of this was to draw Magnus’s attention and get the rest of the draug to come after me; they needed all the hot, tasty vampire they could get, and I was right here, waiting. But if I waited too long, I could draw them right into my friends instead, especially if I stuck too close to the building itself.

I avoided the puddle, which looked too still, and moved on.

On the side of the plant was a long chain-link fence, posted with warning signs. These made handy grips as I scaled up and over and dropped on the other side … then saw the treatment pools. The water was also treated in the pipes, but there was some kind of system I didn’t fully understand to take it from gray to clean, and each of the pools looked different—a progression of treatments. There were also covered sections and containers on the other side of the fences, probably for taking samples. All in all, it was pretty much Draug Heaven … as long as they didn’t mind questionable water quality.

And I was in trouble, because I almost immediately realized that the pool nearest to me had waves in it. Thin, small waves at the far end, building into large tidal surges as they approached the edges of the ponds.

They were coming for me, and I was already weak. If another one got hold of me, I’d end up at the bottom of that pond, helpless and hopeless this time.

There were walkways over all the pools—rusted metal grates that were elevated about five feet over the surface. I got a running start and leaped over the onrushing waves, landed with a solid thump of feet on metal, and started running against the tide, heading for the far end of the body of water.

The waves collapsed and churned in confusion, as if a school of piranha had turned on itself, and then reversed course to race after me. I felt the shuddering slap as the liquid hit the metal. Smaller waves were trying to leap up and grab hold ahead of me, but they didn’t have momentum and I was hauling ass; the best any of them did was to throw droplets on my shoes, and I kicked those off as I ran. I made it to the end of the walkway. There were two choices here—off onto the ground on the other side, and from there over the fence, or a switchback that ran another, identical walkway at an angle across the next pond.

This one wasn’t quite as murky, and it was smaller; the water was an eerie bluish jade color, completely opaque. It was as still as stone, too, as I vaulted onto the catwalk that angled over it. The draug weren’t slopping over into this pond. I thought they’d chase me … but they stopped at the concrete barrier. Even the waves curled back on themselves rather than fall into these still waters.

I slowed, and stopped. It couldn’t be. I looked ahead; at the next angled intersection between catwalks was another divider, another pool. The water there was clearer, and it almost boiled with activity just like the last pool.

But here, in between … there was nothing. I took a breath, and immediately wished I hadn’t; this whole area reeked of human waste and something else, something sweetly rotten that might have been the draug. No way I could pick out one individual component from the general stench.

I needed a sample of the water the draug seemed to avoid … and I had something to put it in. Eve’s latest gift to me, which I wore on a chain around my neck … a blood vial. Some Goths were into it, keeping each other’s blood as either mementos or trophies, but she’d gotten it mainly because it was, as she put it, my “break glass in case of emergency” supply. It was Eve’s blood. I’d never really planned on drinking it, because it was just a taste, really, but this was a true emergency, after all.

I uncorked it and drained it in one small gulp. The taste of her essence exploded on my tongue in a rush, and I felt my pupils contract and my fangs come down in response. It’s hard to describe what it feels like, except that it’s a whole lot like wanting something you know isn’t good for you. Craving, lust, hunger, fear, all balled up inside a sense of wonder, because you can actually feel the person the blood came from, at least a little. The fresher the blood, the sharper that sensation.

I held that taste in my mouth for a long second that seemed to stretch toward eternity, and then finally swallowed. The blood trickled in warm drops down toward my stomach, and I felt a spurt of energy run through me. Not much, because it wasn’t much blood, but it helped.

I knelt down and stretched out as far as I could; I had to hang at a precarious angle, but I finally got a scoop of the turquoise water into the vial and corked it. Even in the bottle, the liquid looked opaque with whatever was suspended in it. I looped the chain back around my neck and rolled to my feet.

Ahead of me, more turbulence in the next pool. Behind me, the draug were definitely ready to welcome me back.

“The things I do for you, bro,” I said, and ran straight ahead, top speed. The railing flew by in a blur, and as I approached the sharp V-shaped turn that angled across the next pool, also dangerously active, I calculated the distance, propelled myself up and onto the railing, and leaped across. I hit the other catwalk still running, but this time the draug had anticipated me, and the waves were heading toward me, building fast.

They were going to build high enough to swamp the catwalk, and once they were on it, they could pull me off balance and down into the depths.

I snarled, fangs out, and timed it carefully. Wait … wait … I kept running, faster and faster, building up momentum as the wave broke through the catwalk’s grating and raced toward me, and then I slammed both feet down, hard. It was a risk. The catwalk was old, and rusty, and if my feet had broken through I’d have been done, but the hard old bridge held, and I arced up, up and over. The wave reached up for me, and I pulled my knees up in midair.

The draug’s murky liquid form slapped at the soles of my shoes, and then dissolved and fell back into the pool. My jump carried me forward, and I landed hard, rolling with it to shed momentum, then bouncing back to my feet before they could react.

I made it to the end and leaped the railing into the tall winter-scorched weeds.

They didn’t come after me. The waves subsided back into the pool. I stared at them for a second, wondering what the hell it was going to take to really make them come out of their hiding place after me, and finally thought to look back at the other pools.

The one that I’d just crossed was agitating just enough to keep my attention, but the ones on the ends were suspiciously quiet.

Ah. The draug were crawling out from my right and left, silently circling toward me. That was better. As long as they were focused on me, they weren’t going to be going after Claire and Eve and the others …

Except that there weren’t enough of them. A few, sure—five, six on each side. There had to be a lot more of them that were strong enough to leave the pool. We’d killed many of them, but not that many; they’d been all over us inside when we’d come earlier. That meant that they were likely still inside.